#Courageous conversations norms full#
#Courageous conversations norms professional#

Be mindful of your language and behaviour – are you procrastinating, avoiding, or skirting around the issues?.Here’s seven tips for building your courage to have a courageous conversation: Staff and the wider public may be mystified and wonder what is going on behind the scenes. This stifles progress, potential, and creativity in an organisation, and the misunderstandings and lost opportunities are costly. Leaders lobby for support and unwittingly encourage ‘group think’, rather than engage in direct purposeful discussion. We indulge in self-deprecating talk, and don’t really believe what we are saying. We play down our differences to appear egalitarian (Bonisch-Brednich 2008). When we say, ‘No worries’, ‘No problem’, we hope that will be the case, but often it won’t be.

#Courageous conversations norms full#

Left unchecked these traits can result in a delay or full avoidance of an important conversation, or when in conversation, the ‘skirting around’ of the issues. It’s our propensity to be agreeableness and humble (as a population, we lie high on the Mini-IPIP6 Personality Trait scale for both (Sibley & Pirie, 2013)) that can trip us if we’re not careful. We have many wonderful characteristics as a population - long may our traits of kindness, openness to new ideas, good sense of humour and honesty stay strong. It won’t come as any surprise to you that some of New Zealand’s social interaction norms don’t work in our favour when it comes to engaging in difficult conversations. Resilient leaders and effective courageous conversations go hand in hand. Courage can be built with courageous conversation skills and should be a core competency in organisations of any size.Effective courageous conversations can prevent conflict, maintain and strengthen relationships, and generate new opportunities.The risk of postponing, avoiding, or ‘winging’ the conversation is significantly higher, than the risk associated with a timely, well planned courageous conversation.

#Courageous conversations norms professional#

As a professional working to assist people to communicate effectively with one another on challenging topics, I can assure you: Sometimes we even avoid them, and we are generally underprepared when they do happen. This discomfort causes us to procrastinate and these vital conversations are often left for too long. Our discomfort stems from our fear of how other people (or ourselves) may respond and any long-term effects. ‘Courageous conversations’ are the important conversations that we don’t want to have – conversations that require courage.